The cultivating of soil has been carried on throughout most of recorded history and continues through the present day. Soil is cultivated for a variety of reasons including the growing of plants for food, the participation in gardening as a hobby, and for aesthetic purposes such as landscaping or the like. Regardless of the purpose for cultivating soil, the complete operation in most instances requires a variety of tools to achieve the desired soil conditions and manipulation. While a number of power assisted or power operated cultivating tools have been created through the years, a substantial amount of soil cultivation is nonetheless still carried on by hand.
Perhaps the most popular hand cultivating tools include rakes, hoes, picks and shovels. While rakes come in a variety of forms, they typically include an elongated handle having a laterally disposed cross member which in turns supports a plurality of tines often arranged in parallel array. The function of a rake is generally to provide combing or smoothing of the soil. Rakes are also used to cultivate or loosen the soil to a desired depth. A hoe is generally similar to a rake in that it includes an elongated handle. However, a hoe usually comprises a planar blade supported transverse to the handle which is often used in short chopping motions to break up or till the soil. A pick, in its most common form, includes an elongated handle similar to that of an ax or the like having at least one elongated generally curved and sharpened or pointed blade extending transversely from the handle. The pick is generally used in chopping or swinging motions to drive the blade deep into the soil and permit the soil to be broken up or loosened. Shovels exist in a variety of forms and generally comprise an elongated handle having a digging blade often having a curved or pointed shovel edge.
While such tools provide substantial benefit in cultivating soil and work very satisfactorily in most instances, their use in various combinations to cultivate soil is often inconvenient in that a great variety of tools must be carried to and from the work location and must be carefully placed away from the work area to avoid injury to the worker. In addition, substantial time is often lost in switching among such an array of cultivating tools.
There remains, therefore, a need in the art for an improved cultivating tool which provides a compact, easy to use and effective multiple use capability without the need of utilizing an array of individual tools.